1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to remote-control apparatus and, more particularly, to novel and highly-effective apparatus for remotely controlling the operation of one or more electronic devices.
2. Prior Art
Remote-control apparatus is available for turning on and off the power source of various electronic instruments at a desired time. For example, remote-control apparatus has been proposed for producing and transmitting a remote-control signal in response to a stored timer program at a predetermined time, thereby to effect remote control of audio instruments, video tape recorders, television receivers and the like.
In such remote-control apparatus, a timer may be employed as a remote-control unit and may be inserted into a ROM (read-only memory) cartridge entrance port of a personal computer. Then, if time signals are arranged to have a predetermined relation to one another, audio instruments, a video tape recorder, a television receiver and so on can be controlled by the keyboard of a personal computer in real time. More specifically, a predetermined event signal can be supplied from the keyboard to a CPU (cental processing unit), which then produces the data corresponding to the event signal by reference to a ROM in which a data table is stored, and this data is supplied through an infrared encoder to an LED that functions as an infrared transmitter.
However, although a relatively complex timer program can be written and then stored by such timer apparatus, there is a concern that the timer program will contain an error and that the audio instruments, video tape recorder, television receiver and the like will not be operated as intended.